


UC Santaruz: The One Where Hector Really Tries, You Guys

by DeathlyHallows



Category: Fire Emblem Series, Fire Emblem: Rekka no Ken | Fire Emblem: Blazing Sword
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - Modern with Magic, Audism mentioned, But itll be hard, College, Deaf Character, Deaf!Lyn, Elihec is coming i promise, Everyone is gay and ability is a construct, F/F, Gen, I promise I'll try not to make EVERYONE gay, Inspired by Inqua, M/M, ME - Freeform, So far Marth is only mentioned and it's intentionally obscure, internalized ableism, who has only ever succeeded at writing one-shots: im gonna write a slow burn
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-03-21
Updated: 2018-03-22
Packaged: 2019-04-05 16:55:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 2,463
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14048679
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DeathlyHallows/pseuds/DeathlyHallows
Summary: I discovered Inqua's college AU and somehow this happened. I don't have an excuse except that Hector is a Good Boy™.Okay, that's not really the premise. It's more or less a slice of life fic about Hector juggling sports, friends, academics, and his nerdy boyfriend Eli all the while dealing with an undiagnosed learning disability. The tags will be updated as more characters show up!





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [inqua](https://archiveofourown.org/users/inqua/gifts).



> So, just for context, this is a hybrid AU, meaning we have modern technology and schools but it still takes place in Elibe and magic exists. Also, the school isn't necessarily in Santaruz, I'm just a sucker for a terrible pun. Enjoy!

Hector had never been good in school. It was common knowledge, a joke, even. He was the jovial jock who got by on his good looks and athletic abilities but little else. Even Hector was in on it; when Lucius (the only one who ever still bothered) invited him to study, Hector would simply laugh and say, “study? I'm not familiar with the concept.”

But while everyone knew Hector to be a sub-par student, nobody, not even Eliwood knew the truth: his middling academics were hardly for lack of effort.

Hector  _ wanted _ to do well in his classes. He resented knowing that the only things keeping him enrolled were his knack for running fast, punching hard, and being wealthy. Mostly the last one, if he was being honest. And it frustrated him knowing that no matter how hard he tried to remember it, his essays about the economic implications of a theoretical unification of the Lycian League or the ethics of using Mend on the terminally ill inevitably stayed on his desk, in the cloud, or a few times, on the library's printer tray in his daily mad dash to make it to class on time.

So it was easier to pretend he didn't care. Being aloof is way cooler than being a failure, after all.

But as he lay on his too-small dorm bed, muscles aching, waiting for Eliwood to return from Model United Nations, Hector couldn't help but wonder: how long could he really keep this up?


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I took a small liberty regarding Hector's surname, hopefully it isn't particularly off-putting.

“...so you see, the more plates the column has, the more efficient the chromatographer is, and the more expensive it will be,” droned the professor. What was a plate, exactly? Hector peered at his notes, hoping he'd managed to write something useful while staring blankly at the wall. To his dismay, the only thing legible was “distillation theory???” circled sloppily a few times. Hector didn't know what that meant, either. It honestly sounded more like Mage territory than biotechnology, anyway.

Why was he taking this class again? Who thought a night class was a good idea?

Oh, right. He did.

Oswin had suggested that he try a certificate while working toward his Bachelor, something hands-on, like lab work. Hector hadn't bargained for a three and a half hour lecture at night to be part of the process.

As he blinked at the slides he realized there was a fuzzy spot growing in the lower right corner of his field of vision. Fantastic. Just what he needed tonight. He slipped out of class and headed to the nearest vending machine to buy a cola. A vulnerary would have been preferable, but he'd left them all back in the dorm.

Hector didn't like caffeine; he found it dulled his senses, but beggars couldn't be pickers. No, that didn't sound quite right...

His right temple was beginning to throb and his vision was mostly spotty by now. He tried to inch his way back to class by hugging the wall, but found himself colliding with a tall stranger dressed in, as best he could tell, a strange purple suit.

Papers and tomes went flying and the man cursed softly to himself. “Apologies, I really must watch where I'm-” Hector heard him stop and take a sharp breath. “Are you alright? You look rather...pinched.”

“Migraine,” Hector grunted. He knew his face felt tighter during his episodes but it was strange to be told that it was visible.

The man tutted worriedly and patted Hector on the arm. “Oh dear. Why don't we head into my office, it's right down the hall and the lights turn all the way off. That'll be better than standing out here under these fluorescents. Let me just gather my things.” Hector heard papers rustling and then felt a hand at his elbow. “This way. I believe we also have a nursing student on call tonight, if you'd like me to fetch her.”

“Serra or Priscilla?”

“Serra,” confirmed the purple blob of a stranger.

“Think I'm better off not.” Hector grimaced, partially at the thought of such a loud, shrill voice during a migraine, and partially due to the brain fog currently making words so difficult.

He was led into a dark room and guided to a chair.

“This is my office. You can call me Canas. And you are?”

“Hector D’Ostia.”

Hector heard a sudden flurry of papers ruffling.

“Aha! I thought your name sounded familiar. Dr. Lowell in the political science department sent me a memo the other day recommending you have an assessment with me.”

Hector started furrowing his brow and winced. “Am I in trouble? I thought Dr. Lowell liked.” He paused, and then, noticeably too late, finished, “me.”

“Not in trouble at all, Mr. D’Ostia,” Canas reassured. “I should have mentioned, I'm a new academic counselor. Dr. Lowell simply suggested that you might have a learning disability and suggested an assessment so we can set up accommodations.”

Oh.

Well.

That was...sure something.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Anybody else psyched for bunny Alfonse? No? Okay then.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter really got away from me. It's somehow longer than the previous two combined.  
> Content-wise, it involves some internalized ableism. It's pretty mild, but might be off-putting for some so I thought I'd just mention it.

“Don't be stupid.”

“Ever tactful as always, Lady Lyndis.”

Lyn waved Lucius’s comment aside, but Hector chuckled. On the outside, Lucius may have mastered the appearance of a polite and timid theology major and Elimine acolyte, but Hector knew better. They all did.

“Word choice aside,” Hector began with a drawl, “or, not aside, actually. I may just be stupid, Lyn. That's what I'm frustrated about.”

Eliwood made his disappointed-but-controlled face (yeah, that one) and awkwardly patted Hector's shoulder. “That's not what a learning disability means, Hector. Plenty of famous thinkers throughout history have had them.”

“You know,” Lucius intoned, “it is said that even St. Elimine had difficulty reading most tomes. Legend holds that the Aureola made itself legible to her with an ease she had never before encountered. That is how she knew the tome had chosen her.”

“Funny, I thought it was forged specifically for her.”

Everyone except Lyn and Lucius startled at the sound of Raven’s voice. Lyn had an uncanny knack for knowing when people approached without a sound. Lucius, on the other hand, was presumably just used to it.

“Better PR,” Lucius shrugged.

“I appreciate the story and all, but I'm not exactly a legendary hero. I'm just a below average college student who'd rather just continue pretending I don't care than be told that I'm not cut out for this at all.”

Lyn slammed her hands down on the table, making Eliwood jump and Hector raise an eyebrow. Lyn was generally even-tempered, but she was descended from a long line of passionate warriors, and sometimes it showed.

“Hector, the Disabled Students Programs and Services department doesn't exist to bar disabled students from receiving an education. They serve the opposite purpose. It's the job of the administration, in conjunction with the instructors, to make sure your needs are being met.”

“Right, because that's always worked out for you, Lyn.”

Lyn smirked with grim satisfaction. “I handled Dr. Croon just fine.”

Lucius peeked up from his thermos. “What happened with Dr. Croon?”

“Walked right into her trap, man,” Hector said. Lyn lightly whacked his head.

“Keep in mind this happened about halfway through the semester. I'd had interpreters there every class and Dr. Croon had been informed  _ well _ before session started that I would require accommodations. So you'd assume he had his shit together, right? And he did, mostly; there were a few uncaptioned videos but I get it, that happens. The terps were pretty good for it.” She paused for dramatic effect. “Well, one day we took longer than expected on the first lecture, didn't have time to finish the second one. No big deal, he told us, said he'd just send us a lecture via email.”

Lyn scoffed and Hector couldn't help but notice that Raven was working hard not to look utterly enrapt. Who could blame him? Lyn had a knack for storytelling when she wanted to.

“Lyn, you look like you're gonna burst if you wait any longer, just get to the climax.”

“The nadir,” she corrected, and Hector made a face. Hadn't the whole point of the conversation started with him being bad at that stuff?

“Alright, alright. Well, I went to open the file, but it was just audio! I thought maybe he'd made a mistake, so I emailed him back asking for a transcript and he said to just ask one of my classmates to do it. The lecture was forty minutes, nobody is going to want to do that! Besides, it's his job, not theirs.

"I didn't want to take the issue to DSPS, because then he would just do it out of obligation. I really wanted him to understand why this was so important, you know?”

By now Lyn’s volume was rather loud and had attracted a few stares from across the quad. Raven pointed this out, a little uncomfortable with the attention pointed in his general direction.

“I have nothing to apologize for,” she replied simply, if not a little coldly. “They can stare all they like.”

She cleared her throat and resumed her prior demeanor. “Anyway, what I did was schedule a meeting, and then when I went, I refused to speak in English. Every time Croon said something to me, I signed back. It got my point across really fast.”

“So he sent you the transcript?” Lucius prodded.

“Well...no. He did void the associated assignment but that ignored the fact that it was still relevant information that I was missing out on. Thankfully, a friend of mine lent me his notes from the previous semester.”

Eliwood ducked his head. “Just glad to help, Lyn.”

She smiled and turned back to Hector. “All I'm saying is you have to be your own advocate, but that doesn't mean you're in this alone.”

* * *

 

“Hey Eli?”

Eliwood set down his container of Sacaean takeout ( _ shorva chuchvara  _ and mutton  _ palov _ ) and looked up.

“What if they don't find anything? And it turns out I'm just lazy or a bad student? Because I know it doesn't look like it, but I really really try to do well. I don't _ like _ being the deadbeat brother.”

Even though Hector delivered his confession with a chilling casualness that often accompanied his less chipper statements, Eliwood was surprised. They'd been friends since early childhood, but even so, Hector had rarely opened up like this.

“That's not gonna be the case, Hector. People who work really hard aren't lazy. That's kind of the point, right? You'll figure something out. I believe in you.”

Hector smiled. For better or for worse, Eliwood  _ had _ always believed in him. And while he might not jump to admit it, that was one of the many things Hector appreciated about him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A couple notes: first off, I don't really picture Raven being friends with the main trio here. He just goes wherever his boyfriend goes, and Lucius happens to enjoy their company.
> 
> Secondly, while my narrating style being inconsistent is due to the fact that I'm very out of practice, Lyn's alternating speech patterns are very much intentional. It's partly because of the odd way she was localized (part of the time she has this whole noble polite thing going on, and other times she's very blunt) but I think it's a good reflection on the fact that in this story, English is her second language (Hassar and Madelyn weren't oralists imo). Lyn's story was actually inspired by a Deaf friend of mine, whose story is even more egregious since the professor at hand is a SOCIAL WORKER.
> 
> And finally, just thought I'd point out that the "Sacaean" food mentioned here is in fact real food, and very delicious. If you can't get your hands on Uzbek osh / palov, Afghan qabuli palao is a close second.


	4. Chapter 4

The assessment, Hector decided, was weird. Sure, some of the tasks made sense - complete as many basic arithmetic problems as possible in a minute, or listen to a story and then answer questions about it. Others served less obvious purposes: copy a line drawing, give directions based on a cartoon map, repeat a sequence of words backward.

He knew they were all looking for something specific, but it seemed fairly juvenile and contrived. Hey, those were gold star words, right? See, he was fine!

But if Hector was being honest, some of the tests were embarrassingly difficult. He didn't need a degree in psychology to know that the look Canas gave him after some of his answers regarding the short story were wildly off (even though he'd been listening!) and he always went out of his way to avoid math, so that had been a mess too.

And yet - some of the tasks were exceedingly easy. The drawing was a breeze, and when Canas showed him a picture for fifteen seconds and then drilled him on the details, he knew he'd done well. The whole experience felt inconsistent and bizarre, to say the least.

Finally, toward the end, Hector found himself staring down a questionnaire. He'd been assured that his answers would be confidential, and the only person reading them would be a third-party psychologist.

 

_I often feel discouraged with the way my life is headed._

_True_ _or False?_

_I tend to assume everything will turn out for the worst._

_True or_ _False_ _?_

_I have a tendency to view things from the extremes, either black or white, all or nothing._

_True_ _or False?_

_I'm certain I'll always be a disappointment to those I care about._

_True or False?_

Hector's hand stuttered. He wasn't entirely sure how to answer the question. There wasn't exactly an option for “it's not a depression thing, it's just that my parents died thinking of me as a failure so I can't exactly undo that.”

Okay, well. Maybe it was a little bit of a depression thing.

But mostly it was just knowing what was done was done, right? He couldn't go back in time and tell his younger self, “hey, apparently if you ask people will help you figure out why you're bad at school so maybe do that.”

Hector sighed and left the question blank.

* * *

 

“You had to get your hearing checked?” Eliwood sounded sincere and earnest in his question, because of course he did. Did that boy have an insincere bone in his body? Probably not.

Hector nodded. “I don't think they found anything out of the ordinary, though.”

“Man, that must be nice,” quipped Lyn, snickering when both boys blanched. “Kidding. You know I don't care if you talk about ear stuff, right?”

“Good to know,” responded a still red-faced Eliwood. He sure blushes a lot...

Woah. Pay attention, Hector.

“I guess I gave some weird answers on the listening portion? They probably just wanted to rule it out.”

The hearing test had seemed like a last-minute thing, coming nearly a week after the rest of the tests. Hector wondered what that indicated about his results.

“Man, I swear, there's no faster way to make a guy feel stupid than to sit him down and have him do kiddie math.”

_Kiddie math?_ Lyn mouthed at Eliwood, and he finger spelled it back in confirmation. The two shared a silent agreement regarding their friend’s overall unique word choice.

“I'm so glad I entertain you,” Hector said dryly.

“Oh, hey, Ren Faire is this weekend. Florina’s gonna be jousting if you would like to come.”

“Did you just swoon? I do believe I just saw Lady Lyndis of House Caelin, Daughter of Hassar and heir to the Lorca Chieftaincy, swoon over her girlfriend poking people with a costume lance,” Hector teased.

Lyn just raised her eyebrow and nodded toward Eliwood, who had taken the moment to check his calendar.

“I'm sure I have no idea what you're saying, Lyn.”

“I'm sure you don't, Hector.”

Eliwood looked up in confusion. “What?”

“Train gone,” Lyn quipped aloud, “sorry.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Back to somewhat shorter chapters! I feel like I'm dragging this out but I think that's just how storytelling is supposed to work? Still figuring that one out.  
> Also, totally messing with my own meta and world-building (in which Elibe has its own Sign Language) by throwing in an ASL reference, but it fit really well and I felt I had to.  
> I probably will write an interlude where they go to the Ren Faire, because that sounds cute. We'll see.
> 
> Also I stayed up past midnight and spent 47 orbs trying to pull one of the Hares at the Fair but instead got like, four Berukas. Come home Alfie


End file.
